Temporal Paralysis

This is one of my post-ups that I find interesting, but nonetheless aren’t worthy of their own articles. So, in 3 minutes (or more/less), let away your speed reading skills! (Details after the jump.)

AMD produced a minor update to their Phenom processors, to get rid of the flaw that somehow locked up all of their processors that used the Barcelona architecture (Phenom and Opteron processors used this architecture). However, I’m still sceptical that this will improve their already beleaguered market position in the processor sector. Intel still dominates this particular segment of the market, and AMD has other commitments (with ATI, nonetheless) to look into, so expect AMD to fall further behind. Unless they could find something revolutionary to lift their fortunes.

After a 3-day hacking challenge over at Vancouver (the CanSecWest conference), a Sony Vaio that ran a Linux OS was left as the sole survivor, after the Mac OS and Windows Vista platforms have been cracked by 3 other participants. I suspect that nobody wanted to crack the Linux OS, because why would you want to throw dreg onto a platform that everybody, from pirates to hackers, and open-source advocates, respect, although about 400 bugs were found on it?

The next-generation Asus Eee PC, which is touted to display a 10 inch screen and major upgrades to its solid-state hard drive space and RAM, is confirmed to be on sale somewhere in May or June. There are also images touted to be the desktop version of the same brand-model floating on the Internet. In short, I’m already eyeing on the 10 inch Eee, while deceiving others to get hold of the current 7-inch as soon as possible, to eliminate competition. XD

Akihabara Channel — the same people that gave you the English-translated map of the famous Electric Town — have released an event schedule of what’s happening in this otaku haven. Doujinshi events, galleries, fairs etc. are all detailed. Tentative dates and what not, for those who frequent Tokyo and/or are planning to visit the area, this is definitely a good guide to choose the period you want to go.

Lol. America likes dark, top-secret projects. No wonder all that R&D money goes into military projects that don’t require public auditing. Two words: good luck. In the race for economic succession, China and India are poised to contribute their share of their political, economic and cultural clout (minus the Tibetan protests for the Chinese) to the world. And the outgoing world superpower? Economic recession, and an increasingly Orweillian society that trades freedom for security.

And, this is probably the biggest news, in my opinion.

Spotted at the Tokyo Anime Center, a big poster has been set up, calling for the end for fansubs and their distribution. The copyright pundits have proposed a meeting sometime in April to discuss on ways to combat the pirate culture of fansubbing. Two words: good luck. As Funimation CEO admits: they are also tracking the fansubbing community to discern the titles that are popular with the animé viewers, and to subsequently license them to ride on the popularity wave of series that will benefit their coffers. So, no way, Mr. Web Sheriff-wannabes. Fansubbing is here to stay. While I can’t offer you any solutions to the problem, I suggest looking at what Gonzo has done, with their partnerships with video-streaming websites to increase their audience share globally.

The Crunchyroll news development has really piqued my interest. Previously it was just a depository of Japanese dramas and animé, which I subscribed to, only because I was dragged along by my significant other to watch J-drama together.

Then it became a big news that a venture capital firm injected US$4 million to Crunchyroll, prompting an outcry from Bandai Visual and Funimation USA concerning the inherent piracy in the video-sharing website. The ultimate kicker, probably in the eyes of American distributors, is that the makers of Crunchyroll has successfully roped in Gonzo, a Japanese animé company, and other content creators, to stream videos of their upcoming animé on Crunchyroll, among other video-sharing websites.

Talk about a straight-up underhand punch.

I can emphasised with the American distributors. They have been the pioneers in bringing animé into mainstream America (East Asian/Southeast Asian markets have their own ways of exposure to animé, which I had not been thoroughly aware of), painstakingly introducing every animé series conceivable, to the general audience in America. Unfortunately, there is a high price to pay for acquiring such shows: Geneon USA had been most publicised in the animé fan circles for folding.

So it all comes to make sense, at least to the Japanese animé companies, to cut the middleman out, if it proves too much of a hassle to earn revenue from licensing & distribution rights, and doesn’t improves the piracy rate online. Besides, all animé fans, at least the English-speaking ones, demanded for a simultaneous, same-timing releases of Japanese shows, and Gonzo has answered their call, by tying up BOST, Youtube and Crunchyroll. I personally don’t know what this all translates to. I’m sure that if you type “Crunchyroll” in Anime Nano’s search area, you’ll have all sorts of commentaries and opinion of whether this translates to a good thing, or a bad thing.

For me, it’s a complicated chains of cause-and-effect.

On the flip side, at least the production schedule might be eased off a bit, because you don’t have a rabid 3-second-attention-span users spamming every nook and cranny of any publishing medium demanding for better/more animé shows. With the tightening controls in effect, the leftover efforts (in terms of manpower and man-hours) can be used for quality control checking, which in turn increases the value of the animé show. At present, many lamented on the mediocre quality of most animé shows being churned out at this moment. (I’m sure everybody will start to forget every show that has been broadcasted in Japan 2 years back, except a few notable ones.)

And while giving broadcasting rights to certain video-sharing websites is a bit futuristic, at least you have garnered some audiences for your own. That’s right: you don’t need a middleman to do the audience-grabbing for you. You (in reference to the animé companies) can have that slice of foreign audiences to come watch the shows you have control over what to broadcast on the Internet.

But, like all debates and discussions, surely you must have some drawbacks.

Since animé shows have become more legally available, there’s no incentive to go back to P2P to “share” the show to strangers you don’t know. But there will be times when the animé companies decide to charge a fee on what you can watch. That means you’ll have to pay financially for the shows you are watching. It depends on what kind of business models the animé companies decides to adopt, so some models will work better than others.

And…. Since most of the videos being posted there are still essentially copyright-infringed materials (the only “derivative” being the subtitles), there’s a potential that there will be some sort of flak going on. Already fansubbers are enraged that a video-sharing company can attain profit while leeching off other people’s works (in their opinion). Also, casual viewers (a.k.a. the “I-don’t-really-go-so-deep-into-anime-so-as-to-buy-the-DVDs-but-I-like-it” audience) are miffed that some shows are being taken off from the website because of potential infringement.

But…

I can’t really thought out of other drawbacks to Crunchyroll’s potential impact on the new Internet business/distribution model. I guess this news might be a good thing after all. Hey, many good points drown out the bad point, am I wrong?

The sceptic in me, however, points out to the death of gaming fandom as the potential future of animé fandom.

If you’re wondering whatever happened to my posts updates, one word: Langkawi.

Expect some pictures to be posted up some time in the future, but in the meantime, continue surfing around, because for what I care, the news of the Japanese crackdowns on Internet sharing, the Comcast saga and, of course, a lone man’s attempt to raise a legal challenge against Odex, has already been days old by the time I finished writing an article about them.

I’m intending to enjoy my short time here as long as I can be.

For most of you who are uninitiated, Shareaza is a P2P software which is licensed under the GNU GPL, that is, the software is free as in beer and speech, as in, it’s supposed to be free for download, and anyone is allowed to modify the program, so long they conform to the license.

On December 2007, an unknown party has “hijacked” the domain name for Shareaza, redirecting unsuspecting users to the “hijackers’” own website. In the website, it asks for paid registration and provides a download to a software passing off as the original software, yet it actually contains malware and is a threat for computer users.

To add matters worse, it is revealed that the “hijacker” belonged to a company that is famous for turning previously supposedly free services into paid unsafe services.

Now, the makers of the Shareaza is facing an ultimate test: their trademark is now being taken over by the company, effectively losing the very name that makes them “Shareaza.”

I am making this post in protest of Discordia Ltd, MusicLabs LLC and all parties that are involved in scamming users and robbing the original authors of their identity and right over their software. Their methods are very unethical, and I daresay downright illegal. They turned something that was supposedly belonged to someone else’s, and then tricked other users to think that “their software” are the legitimate ones, but in actual fact is riddled with malicious codes.

And now they are robbing the authors of Shareaza of their identity, slowly losing control over their software. This, in my opinion, is an outright daylight robbery!

I urged everyone to spread the word, to support Shareaza’s original authors in their legal defense fund in stopping the scammers’ attempt of registering Shareaza trademark as theirs.

SHAREAZA™ IS THE PROPERTY OF THE SHAREAZA DEVELOPMENT TEAM.

Links:

• Conspiracy Against Shareaza and Open Letter to the Recording Industry — TorrentFreak
• Shareaza.com Hijacked and Turned Into a Scam Site — TorrentFreak
• Lawyers For ‘Imposter’ P2P Software Threaten Open-Source Team — TorrentFreak
• After Hijacking Site, Scammers Move to Seize Shareaza Trademark — TorrentFreak
• Shareaza Forums: Opposing the Shareaza Trademark